No AC..help!!

kj9

New Member
I'm posting this in the Health Clinic, because even though my chams aren't currently doing poorly, I'm fearful for their health if I don't find a resolution to my problem.

The house I live in has no central air - just window units. Well..one went out earlier this summer, but it's a fairly small house so we were doing okay with just one unit running. The second unit just went out today. The room my chams are in was incredibly hot, so I put a box fan in the doorway. I want to move it to across the room from the cages, but that's where my first question comes up:
1. Is it unhealthy/stressful for the chams to have the fan constantly blowing on them?

Next, their heat lamps well..create a lot of heat. I wanted to turn them off, but then they wouldn't have a basking area anymore. So second question:
2. Is it okay to turn off their basking lamps in order to let the room cool down a bit?

Lastly, does anyone have any other ideas for helping me keep my chams from getting wayyy too hot between now and the time my sloth of a landlord gets around to getting our window units fixed/replaced?

Thanks!
 
Is my landlord your landlord too? Lol I'm having the same issue.. big AC went out at the very beginning of summer, it took them a week to bring in 2 window units that only keep part of the house cool. Luckily my husbands aunt was able to loan us there older window unit. But it doesnt fit the windows so I need to build a table for it.

Anyways... yes fans blowing directly on them will cause stress. Yes you can turn off their basking light for a little while.
 
Haha maybe so.

Do you think just keeping it in the doorway will be alright? I thought about facing it out of the room so it pulls some of the hot air out of there?
 
That should be fine. I have an oscilating fan that sometimes blows across the cages and it dries them out faster but it's okay otherwise as long as it's not constant. There is wind in the wild afterall. You can turn off the lights to cool the room down. It's not as ideal to not have a basking spot, but they must be able to cool down too so it's a bigger worry to stay too hot all the time than to not have a basking spot.
 
If it gets really hot in my house I turn off his heat basking light, leaving the UVB on. Chams will often sit with their mouths open if they are overheated, so look out for that.

I wouldn't put the fan directly on the chameleon, although I'm sure they experience some wind in the wild. Maybe if you have an oscillating fan you can use that too?

What are the enclosure's temps right now?
 
With the heat lamps off in my juvenile male's and my female's cages, their temps are now 83 and 84 degrees respectively. I left the heat lamp on in my adult male's cage & it is 89 degrees in there. (All of their thermometers are placed at the very top of their cage).
 
go ahead and turn off the basking lights. let the UVB lamps provide the light for now - if its that hot they don't need basking heat. or just provide only a very low wattage bulb (10w for example)

put a few fans in the room. preferably oscillating, not directly blowing constantly on the chams, but moving the air.

put blocks of ice or those freezer blocks that don't drip in front of the fans (the original ac)

put non-melting freezer blocks on or around the cages (not so the chams can touch them, but so that the air around the blocks is cooled)

provide plenty of drinking water
 
Their basking lights are off, and that's already helped a lot.

I've exchanged the box fan that I had in there for the oscillating one from our bedroom. (Not sure what my boyfriend will think of that when he gets home haha)

What do you mean by putting blocks of ice in front of the fans? (I know this definitely isn't what you meant, but I just pictured someone duct taping ice cubes to the front of their fan.)

That's a good idea, I'll do that.

I've got drippers going in all three cages.

Thank you all for the quick responses! :)
 
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